After you've imported your patients from Cliniko, you can bring over their appointment history and treatment notes. Go to Settings → Data → Import history from Cliniko. There are three importers:
- Import appointments takes the Attendees CSV (or Cliniko's older Appointments CSV).
- Import notes takes the "All treatment notes" CSV.
- Import notes as files takes per-patient PDFs, or the Patient attachments export once you've unzipped it.
This is available on the Solo, Clinic and Practice plans, to the Owner and Manager roles. On the Free plan the card is locked and shows a See plans link.
Before you start
Import your patients first. These importers only attach appointments, notes and files to patients who are already in Atlacare. They never create patients. Rows for anyone not found are listed in the error report instead.
Add your practitioners in Settings → Team. Each appointment and note needs an Atlacare team member as its practitioner.
If you import patients with the Cliniko preset, the patient import keeps each patient's Cliniko ID column. That ID is the most reliable way to match appointments and notes to the right person.
1. Export from Cliniko
In Cliniko, go to Settings → Data exports:
- Appointments: choose Attendees, which has one row per patient per appointment. Set both dates to Any time to get your full history. The Calendar events export has no patient details, so it can't be used.
- Treatment notes: choose All treatment notes. Only Cliniko administrators can run this export.
- Attachments: choose Patient attachments. You get a ZIP with a folder for each patient. Unzip it before you import.
Cliniko's help centre covers these exports in Export appointment calendar and attendees data and Export your data.
2. Check the columns
Atlacare recognises the usual Cliniko column names and matches them for you. On the Columns step you can fix any that are wrong. Appointments need a patient column, a practitioner and the start date and time. Notes need a patient column, a practitioner and the note or appointment date.
For notes, each template question in the export (for example "Presenting complaint" or "Plan") becomes a titled section of the imported note. Click a column to leave it out.
3. Match practitioners, appointment types and patients
On the Match step:
- Practitioners are matched by name, the same way the patient import does it. Change any that are wrong. Rows for a practitioner set to "Don't import" are left out.
- Appointment types can map to one of your services. Otherwise Atlacare creates an inactive service called "Imported: type", which can't be booked online.
- Patients are matched in this order: Cliniko patient ID, then name and date of birth, then email. Matching on name alone is off by default. Turn it on if your file has no ID, date of birth or email. Even then, a row only matches when exactly one patient has that name.
4. Dry run
Check matches runs a dry run, and nothing is saved at this point. Every row is shown as Matched, Ambiguous (for example, two patients share the name), Unmatched or Can't import (for example, an unreadable date), with the reason. Click Download error report to get the full list as a CSV.
For appointments, the dry run also counts how many will be imported as completed, cancelled, did not arrive and upcoming.
5. Import
Press Import and keep the window open while it runs in batches. You'll see a progress bar.
How appointments come across:
- A past appointment becomes Completed, or Cancelled or Did not arrive if Cliniko marked it that way.
- A future appointment becomes Booked.
- If the same Cliniko appointment ID is already in Atlacare, the row is skipped, so running the import twice won't create duplicates.
How notes come across:
- Each note is saved as a locked free-text note, visible to staff only (Internal), with the matched practitioner as author.
- It starts with "Imported from Cliniko on date".
- It's attached to that patient's appointment on the same day. If there isn't one, Atlacare creates a completed placeholder appointment to hold it.
- Cliniko drafts are skipped unless you tick Include drafts.
How files come across: each file goes into the patient's files as "Imported note - file name" and counts towards your storage. Files over 9 MB are listed in the error report. Add those from the patient's Files tab instead.
No messages are sent. Imported appointments don't send booking confirmations, reminders or automations. If you want the usual reminders for imported upcoming appointments, turn on Send the usual reminders on the Match step. It's off by default.
Large imports
An import of more than 5,000 appointments, or more than 2,000 notes or files, is checked by our team before it runs. Pressing Import sends the request, and you can run the import once it's approved.
Undo: "Remove this import"
Every import is listed under Recent imports, with its error report. For 7 days after an import you can click Remove this import. This deletes only what that import added and nothing else. If you've since added an invoice or a note to an imported appointment, or an automation has run on it, that appointment is kept.
What isn't imported
- Invoices and payments.
- Patient forms.
- Calendar events without a patient, such as unavailable blocks.
Keep your Cliniko export as your record of these.